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James Corbett, Inside World Football

Friday, November 30, 2012

In a defeat of
proponents of badly needed reform of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC),
the soccer body’s executive committee stalled moves to reorganize its
governance structure, investigate Mohammed Bin Hammam, its president suspended
on charges of financial mismanagement and potential corruption, and challenge a
controversial marketing rights agreement. Instead it focused on scheduling
presidential and committee elections for April.

“Bin Hammam’s
people successfully pushed back. They may now be stronger than they were. They
are protecting vested interests,” one reformer said.

In the battle
to obstruct reforms that would have tackled the Asian soccer body’s troubled
governance structure and helped improve its tarnished image, the executive
committee deferred decisions on an internal audit conducted by
PricewaterhouseCoopers that raised serious questions about a $1 billion master
rights agreement (MRA) negotiated under Mr. Bin Hammam’s supervision with
Singapore-based World Sports Group.

Responsibility
for dealing with the report was delegated to the AFC’s legal committee in which
sources said Mr. Bin Hammam, a 63-year old Qatari national, wields considerable
influence. The committee’s chairman, Pakistani government minister and Pakistan
Football Federation (PFF) president Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat thwarted
an attempt to establish an ethics task force to deal with issues of governance
and mismanagement by demanding that he be appointed head of the force rather
than Moya Dodd, a respected Australian lawyer and member of the AFC executive
committee.

The executive
committee also deferred a proposal for an independent valuation of the WSG
contract, which PwC said may be undervalued.

“The PwC report
was effectively buried,” one source said.

The proposals
for reform were being pushed by a minority of the member associations,
including those of Jordan, Singapore, Japan, Australia and Guam, sources said.

Sources said
opponents of change were aided by reluctance of acting AFC president Zhang
Zhilong to take a firm stand in the committee meeting. “Zhilong sat on the
fence. He allowed Makhdoum’s group to reign,” one source said, adding that he
has his eyes on the election in which many see the Chinese national as a
frontrunner.

The sources
said Mr. Bin Hammam’s supporters benefitted from the fact that Mr. Zhilong and
others who now are critical of Mr. Bin Hammam are hampered by their history.
Mr. Zhilong recently accused Mr. Bin Hammam and his lawyer, Eugene Gulland, of
employing “intimidatory tactics” in his battle within the AFC. Messrs Bin
Hammam and Gulland have rejected the accusation.

"Zhilong
is doing his best but Bin Hammam has made clever use of history -- Zhilong was
head of the finance committee under Bin Hammam. Zhilong is a little bit scared
and can’t be too aggressive. He knows that he is not without blame and that the
ground under him is not rock solid,” one source said.

An AFC
statement asserting that the committee meeting was “marked by solidarity”
notwithstanding, sources said there were bitter battles over the calls for
reform and action on the basis of the PwC report with pro-Bin Hammam members
strategizing deep into the night on the eve of the crucial gathering.

The AFC’s
deferral of action on the PwC audit portrays the Asian soccer body as an
organization unwilling or unable to confront head on serious allegations of
financial mismanagement and possible corruption. The decision nonetheless is
not enough to bury the audit.

Responsibility
for investigating Mr. Bin Hammam’s management of the AFC, including the
allegations made by the PwC report was handed prior to the executive committee
meeting to world soccer body FIFA. The investigation is being merged with a
separate FIFA investigation into charges that Mr. Bin Hammam last year sought
to buy the votes of Caribbean soccer officials in his campaign to replace Sepp
Blatter as FIFA president.

The blocking of
proposed reforms and action on the PwC’s report is Mr. Bin Hammam’s second
victory in recent months. The Lausanne=based Court for the Arbitration of Sport
(CAS) earlier overturned a lifetime ban on involvement on soccer imposed on
63-year old Qatari national by FIFA. CAS was careful however not to declare Mr.
Bin Hammam innocent, saying that the evidence presented was insufficient and
shoddy and that FIFA should come back with a better prepared case.

Mr. Bin Hammam,
who is at the center of the worst scandal in the history of both FIFA and the
AFC, has repeatedly denied any wrong doing and has charged that the allegations
were construed in a bid to destroy him because he had credibly challenged Mr.
Blatter.

The PwC audit
concluded that Mr. Bin Hammam had used an AFC sundry account as his personal
account, raised questions about the negotiation and terms of the MRA and rang
alarm bells about $14 million in payments to Mr. Bin Hammam by a WSG
shareholder in advance of the signing of the agreement.

The AFC this
month, In a move that effectively tightens Mr. Bin Hammam and WSG's grip on key
parts of the AFC including Mr. Soosay as well as its marketing, legal and
finance committee, fired its marketing director Satoshi Saito, who was seconded
for two years to the group by the Japanese Football Association (JFA), one of
the Qatari national’s staunchest critics.

Sources said
that Mr. Saito was advised that his contract would not be extended and that he
no longer had to come to the office. Mr. Saito, the sources said, had long been
barred from meetings with WSG, AFC's marketing partner, on the grounds that
"the company holds all plenipotentiary rights to AFC's marketing
rights." Some sources said the fact that Mr. Saito was likely to be
replaced by a lower level manager rather than a director strengthened WSG’s grip,
but was also motivated by the soccer body’s budgetary shortfalls.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

JOHN DUERDEN, Associated Press

Published 11:34 p.m., Tuesday, November 27, 2012

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) —
A divided Asian Football Confederation gathers for its
annual awards ceremony in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday amid an increasingly toxic
atmosphere, with suspended chief Mohamed bin Hammam calling those in charge
puppets and claiming he has the support of most AFC national associations.

On Thursday, Asian
football will laud its player, coach and team of 2012 but beyond the glitter
and red carpet will be more intense political maneuvers, as the AFC's
decision-making Executive Committee meets to discuss the bin Hammam imbroglio
that has now dragged on for 18 months.

Bin Hammam, who took the
post in 2002, was found guilty of vote-buying during his challenge against FIFA president Sepp Blatter in May 2011 and FIFA's Ethics Committee suspended him from all
football activity for life.

After an appeal, the Court
of Arbitration for Sport overturned that ban in July. Bin Hammam, 63, was
subsequently banned temporarily by both FIFA and AFC as allegations of
financial irregularities during his nine-year tenure are investigated by the
world governing body.

The Qatari has repeatedly
denied all charges, claiming that there are forces at work both in Asia and
elsewhere out to get him.

"I believe (my
suspension) causes huge damage to the AFC," bin Hammam told Associated
Press by email. "The AFC is no longer its own master. It is now controlled
partly by FIFA and partly by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA).

"Unfortunately, there
are those who are currently in power and decision-making positions in AFC who
are no more than puppets and blind followers of either FIFA or the OCA. These
people believe that FIFA and the OCA are going to either put them in a more
powerful position or consolidate their current position."

Zhang Jilong, a Chinese executive, took the role
of acting president of the AFC following bin Hammam's suspension. Zhang had
remained tight-lipped about his suspended predecessor for much of his 18 months
in the job but broke that silence in October when he accused the Qatari and his
lawyer of using intimidating tactics against former colleagues.

"Their plan is
intimidate and create technical legal issues and objections in the hope that
the more serious allegations of secret commissions, bribery, corruption and
other wrong-doings are never exposed to the light of day," Zhang wrote in
a letter to AFC member associations.

Bin Hammam believes
however that he has the support of the majority.

"I will say that in
the whole of Asia, I can identify only around five to six member associations
and officials who are actively working against me. Particularly I will not
accuse the Chinese FA of any attempts to damage my reputation or that they are
part of group of people who are responsible for what I am going
through today.

"I do not believe
that other federations, other than Japan in the East, are playing any role in
this scheme to remove me. The majority of the member associations are either
with me or have sympathy for me."

"Whether that support
constitutes a majority of associations will be clear at this week's AFC Executive Committee. A decision to delay
acting on an internal audit that questions bin Hammam's management of the AFC
and suggests looking at legal action would mean that his support in the group
is sufficient to enforce his will. The opposite would mean that his
considerable support is not enough to stop the group from acting
against him."

Bin Hammam has insisted in
private that he is not interested in returning to his former post and is
interested only in clearing his name.

When the situation is
finally resolved, an election for a permanent president will be held. Zhang is
expected to stand.

"A number of bin Hammam
opponents see Zhang as the man who will be able to heal wounds in a post-bin
Hammam era," said Dorsey. "Although he was head of the finance
committee under Bin Hammam, Zhang has sided with the reformers within AFC . he
is betting on the fact that bin Hammam will ultimately lose his battle or that
even if achieves some measure of victory he is too damaged to return as head of
the AFC."

Rivals from the western
side of Asia would include Yousuf Al Serkel, president of the United Arab
Emirates FA, and his Bahraini counterpart Sheikh Salman of Bahrain. A west
versus east election, often a source of division in Asian football, could
further increase tension levels.

"Each time during the
elections, I see this east-west tension rearing its ugly head,"said bin
Hammam. "Both sides are guilty of acting in a foul manner, encouraging
this East-West tension so that they themselves gain during the election. This
is very unfortunate as when this happens, we as members of the football family
are allowing outsiders to take advantage of us.

"Throughout my career
at the AFC, I have ignored the political side and focused completely 100% on
the development of the game and fair play."

Sunday, November 25, 2012

VS

By James M. Dorsey

The Asian Football Confederation's (AFC) executive committee
meets on Thursday for initial make-or break discussions of proposed reforms
that threaten to weaken the grip on the organization of its suspended president
Mohammed Bin Hammam and could initiate the unravelling of its controversial
ties to a Singapore-based sports marketing company.

The meeting could also determine the fate of an uphill
battle by reformers for sweeping change in the organization that sources say “is
still riven with corruption.” The reformers were boosted earlier this month
when they succeeded in getting responsibility for an investigation into Mr. Bin
Hammam’s financial management of the AFC and his relationship to the group’s
marketing partner, Singapore-based World Sports Group, which has a $1 billion
marketing rights agreement (MRA) with the AFC, transferred to world soccer body
FIFA.

"The AFC is so divided that it is incapable of investigating
itself. The only way to get a proper inquiry at this moment is through FIFA.
That constitutes the fallback position of the reformers within the AFC,"
one source said.

Sources said the FIFA investigation, which besides the AFC
also involves charges of bribery in the Caribbean against Mr. Bin Hammam, was
certain to lead to the demise of the Qatari national, who has been suspended as
both AFC president and FIFA vice-president pending the outcome of the inquiry.
Mr. Bin Hammam has repeatedly denied all wrong doing and charged that the
accusations against him of bribery, corruption and financial mismanagement were
a conspiracy by FIFA president Sepp Blatter to destroy him.

The initial moves to remove Mr. Bin Hammam from his
positions in world and Asian soccer came last year. Mr. Bin Hammam was forced
to drop his effort to unseat Mr. Blatter as president in a FIFA presidential
election because of charges that he had sought to buy the votes of Caribbean
soccer officials.

The sources said the takeover of the AFC inquiry, which involves
an internal audit on behalf of the AFC conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC) that extensively questions the MRA, would have to investigate the
agreement that is so closely held that even AFC executive committee members
have been unable to see it as well as the company’s relationship with the AFC
and Mr. Bin Hammam.

The PwC audit concluded that Mr. Bin Hammam had used an AFC
sundry account as his personal account, raised questions about the negotiation
and terms of the MRA and rang alarm bells about $14 million in payments to Mr.
Bin Hammam by a WSG shareholder in advance of the signing of the agreement.

“It is highly unusual for funds (especially in the amounts
detailed here) that appear to be for the benefit of Mr Hammam personally, to be
deposited to an organization’s bank account. In view of the recent allegations
that have surrounded Mr Hammam, it is our view that there is significant risk
that…the AFC may have been used as a vehicle to launder funds and that the
funds have been credited to the former President for an improper purpose (Money
Laundering risk)” or that “the AFC may have been used as a vehicle to launder
the receipt and payment of bribes.”

A payment of $2 million to Mr. Bin Hammam was made,
according to the PwC audit, by International Sports Events (ISE), which is
believed to have a ten per cent stake in WSG, while $12 million were
transferred by a company related to ISE, Al Baraka Investment and Development
Co. The two companies are part of Saudi billionaire Saleh Kamel’s commercial
empire.

PwC said that Al Baraka “may (through the Arab Radio &
Television Co {ART}, which it owns) have been a 20% beneficial owner of the
group at that time (of the payment). Further, our enquiries indicate that Mr.
Mohyedin Saleh Kamel, the Assistant Chief Executive Officer (Investments) of
the Dallah Al-Baraka Group may have been (from 2005 2009) the Managing Director
of ISE.” PwC said that Mohyedin Saleh Kamel is believed to be Mr. Kamel’s son.
It said that ART and ISE appear to share a post office box in Saudi Arabia.

WSG chairman and CEO Seamus O’Brien partnered last year with
Sela Sport, a Saudi company represented by Hussein Mohsin Al Harthy, to acquire
a majority stake in the New York Cosmos. Media reports and well-placed sources
suggest that Mr. Al Harthy is Mr. Kamel’s brother-in-law. The 2012 Directory of
Islamic Financial Institutions published by Routledge lists Mr. Al Harthy, who
sits on the board of a number of companies of Mr. Kamel’s Dallah Al Baraka
group, as a founder, together with the Saudi billionaire, of the Al Baraka
Islamic Investment Bank BSC in Bahrain.

WSG has so far not commented publicly on the PwC report or
its relationship or that of its shareholder with Mr. Bin Hammam. However in an
August 28, 2012 panicky letter to this reporter that first threatened ongoing legal
action against him, WSG Group Legal Advisor Stephanie McManus asserted that
“PWC are incorrect and misconceived in suggesting that the MRA (master rights
agreement) was undervalued. They have neither considered the terms of the
contract correctly, the market, nor the circumstances in which it was
negotiated.” Ms. McManus’s comments failed to address the bulk of the concerns
raised by PwC.

The letter implicitly acknowledged the accuracy of this
reporter’s reporting by stating that his sources “must have deep knowledge of
the matters referred to in your article,” yet charged that the
reporting contained “false statements, unwarranted and malicious claims and
unsubstantiated conclusions.” The letter further falsely asserted in
contradiction to emails from WSG promising over a period of more than a year to
respond to questions that this reporter had posed without ever following up
that he had never sought comment from the company.

AFC General Secretary Alex Soosay, who has long played both
sides of his divided organization, recently supported WSG's efforts to squash
all reporting on its relationship to the AFC and Mr. Bin Hammam in a statement
included in a submission to the Singapore High Court as part of WSG's legal
effort to force this reporter to disclose his sources.

The legal effort, part of a company strategy apparently designed
to hide its secrets at whatever cost rather than protect legitimate privacy, is
intended to intimidate and threaten the media and their sources, whistle blowers
and anyone critical of WSG. Sources said WSG cared little about reputational
damage that its actions may cause because the company and Mr. O’Brien would
have a lot to lose with a weakening of Mr. Bin Hammam’s influence, reform of
the AFC, greater transparency and a thorough investigation of WSG’s
relationship with the Asian soccer body. “There is a lot at stake for O’Brien,”
one source said.

In a move designed to tighten Mr. Bin Hammam and WSG's grip
on key parts of the AFC including its Mr. Soosay as well as its marketing,
legal and finance committee, the AFC this month fired its marketing director
Satoshi Saito, who was seconded for two years to the group by the Japanese
Football Association (JFA). Sources said that Mr. Saito was advised that his
contract would not be extended and that he no longer had to come to the office.
Mr. Saito, the sources said, had long been barred from meetings with WSG, AFC's
marketing partner, on the grounds that "the company holds all
plenipotentiary rights to AFC's marketing rights." Some sources said the
fact that Mr. Saito was likely to be replaced by a lower level manager rather
than a director strengthened WSG’s grip, but was also motivated by the soccer
body’s budgetary shortfalls.

WSG’s legal effort against this reporter as well as alleged efforts
by WSG to intimidate those who refuse to toe its line that the PwC charges and
questions are not what they appear to be comes as the noose seems to be
tightening around the company's neck. Sources said that even if FIFA stopped
short of challenging the WSG contract because of Mr. Blatter’s alleged long-standing
relationship with Mr. O’Brien – something sources judge unlikely given that it
represents a significant chunk of the PwC report --, Mr. Bin Hammam’s downfall
would from FIFA’s perspective have to involve the loosening of his grip on the
AFC. The sources said a reformed AFC was certain to question WSG's MRA if the
executive committee failed to decide to do so in its forthcoming meeting on
Thursday.

The recommendations for reform being put to the meeting are
expected to include PwC’s advice to AFC that it seek legal advice to ascertain
whether actions it uncovered constituted criminal and/or civil breaches by Mr.
Bin Hammam and others and whether the facts in in the audit constituted
sufficient evidence for a formal criminal complaint. They also are believed to
include PwC’s recommendation that AFC get legal counsel on whether the WSG
shareholder payments warranted “further work to determine if there is a
relationship between the awarding of contracts to WSF (World Sports Football, a
WSG subsidiary) and (Qatari broadcaster) Al Jazeera and the significant
payments made to Mr. Bin Hammam.” Finally, the recommendations are certain to
include PwC’s advice that AFC seek legal counsel on whether there were
sufficient grounds to renegotiate or cancel WSG’s MRA. An executive committee
decision to act on the PwC advice would further focus the FIFA investigation.

Sources said the outcome of the AFC executive committee
meeting was hanging in the balance. They said that Mr. Bin Hammam could control
enough votes in the 21-active member committee to delay the reforms.

They said
Mr. Soosay as well as the executive committee members from the United Arab
Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Nepal, Thailand Sri Lanka, and Pakistan would
likely seek to stall reform and implementation of the PwC recommendations. They
said it was unclear where the Bahraini, Bangladeshi, Indian, Vietnamese and
Myanmar delegates stood.

Although former Bin Hammam associates including acting AFC acting
president Zhang Zhilong, have joined the ranks of the reformers, they are
hampered by their history. Mr. Zhilong recently accused Mr. Bin Hammam and his
lawyer, Eugene Gulland, of employing “intimidatory tactics” in his battle
within the AFC. Messrs Bin Hammam and Gulland have rejected the accusation.

Nevertheless, sources say that Mr. Zhilong is treading
carefully. "Zhilong is doing his best but Bin Hammam has made clever use
of history -- Zhilong was head of the finance committee under Bin Hammam.
Zhilong is a little bit scared and can’t be too aggressive. He knows that he is
not without blame and that the ground under him is not rock solid,” one source
said.

Sources warned that a failure by the executive committee to
embrace reform and act on the PwC recommendations could spark the AFC’s demise.
"If these people really believe Bin Hammam can make a comeback, AFC's days
are numbered," one source said.

Sources said East Asian nations, including China, Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong were informally discussing breaking away from the
AFC to establish their own regional confederation if the executive committee
failed to adopt the reforms. A breakaway would be crippling for the AFC and WSG
with Japan and South Korea alone accounting for 70 percent of the revenues of
the Asian soccer body as well as the MRA.

"This week is make or break for the reformers within
the AFC. It is likely to shape the future of the AFC and its commercial
partners," one source said.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

A pledge by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to re-open all
cases against those responsible for attacks on anti-Mubarak and anti-military
protesters in the last 21 months did little to prevent militant soccer fans
clamoring for justice for hundreds of dead protesters, including 74 of their
own, from joining the outpour of anger against the president’s unilateral
decision to grab wide-ranging powers.

Mr. Morsi had hoped that the re-opening of cases, which
largely failed to condemn those responsible for repeated crackdowns on
protesters, would soften the blow of his power grab and would prevent the
militant, highly politicized, street battle-hardened soccer fans from taking to
the streets.

The fans or ultras, one of Egypt’s largest civic groups
after Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, played a key role in last year’s toppling
of former president Hosni Mubarak and subsequently emerged as the most militant
opposition to the military that led Egypt to the election last July that
brought Mr. Morsi to power.

The fans’ threat to disrupt soccer matches have prevented
the lifting of a ten-month suspension of professional football imposed in
February after 74 supporters of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC died in a
politically loaded brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said. More than 70
people, including nine mid-level security officials, are on trial in Cairo for
their role in the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history in a slow-moving
legal process.

The ultras have insisted that they would prevent a lifting
of the suspension as long as justice for the 74 dead has not been served. The
outpouring of public anger against Mr. Morsi’s power grab offered them an
opportunity to press their demands for reform of the security forces, an end to
corruption in Egyptian soccer and the removal of Mubarak-era appointees from
official positions in the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) and the boards of
clubs.

It also gave the ultras – many of whom are unemployed,
under-educated youth who view the police and the security forces as the representatives
of Mubarak era repression and see battles with them as an exertion of their
wounded dignity – a renewed opportunity to confront law enforcement. In a
replay on the anniversary of battles last year that lasted several days on
Mohammed Mahmoud Street near Cairo’s Tahrir Square in which 42 people were
killed and more than 1,000 wounded, hundreds of ultras have been fighting the
police and security forces on that same street for the past five days.

Thousands of ultras joined mass protests against Mr. Morsi’s
power grab on Friday on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, chanting “The people want to
topple the regime, “Do not be afraid, Morsi has to leave,” and “Down with Mohamed
Morsi Mubarak.” Hundreds of more ultras confronted the security forces on
Mohammed Mahmoud and Qasr al Aini Street with rocks and Molotov cocktails. They
said the security forces were responding with live gun fire and tear gas. Again
like in past battles on Mohammed Mahmoud Street, tens of protesters suffering
from suffocation and other injuries were ferried on motorcycles to a field
hospital set up in Tahrir Square.

15-year old Ahmed Mounir told Egypt’s Ahram Online that his
brother had been injured in last year’s Mohamed Mahmoud clashes and had to have
a leg amputated. “I have been in the square for three days now. I want to
secure my brother’s rights and I don’t care if I live or die,” Mr. Mounir said.

Mr. Mounir’s battle and that of his fellow ultras is a battle
for karama or dignity. Their dignity is vested in their ability to stand up to
the dakhliya, the interior ministry that controls the police and the security
forces, the knowledge that they no longer can be abused by security forces
without recourse and the fact that they no longer have to pay off each and
every policemen to stay out of trouble.

In doing so, the ultras build on a perception perpetuated by
repressive security forces in popular neighborhoods and in the stadiums of
their arbitrary use of force. In the words of scholars Eduardo P. Archetti and
Romero Amilcar police and security forces’ “use of physical force aided by arms
of some kind….(was) exclusively destined to harm, wound, injure, or, in some
cases, kill other persons, and not as an act intended to stop unlawful behavior
that is taking place or may take place.”

Official foot-dragging in holding security officers
accountable adds to that perception, giving “police power…the aura of
omnipotence” that “at the same time lost all legitimacy both in moral and
social terms,” they argued– a development reinforced in post-revolt Arab
societies such as Egypt by the failure to date to reform the security
forces. “To resist and to attack the
police force is thus seen as morally justified,” they wrote.

The renewed clashes on Mohammed Mahmoud Street are as much a
protest against Mr. Morsi’s granting to himself of powers that include immunizing
his decisions against legal challenges and the banning of courts from
disbanding the controversial council drafting Egypt’s new constitution and
parliament’s upper chamber as they are the highlighting frustration with Mr.
Morsi’s failure to address the urgent need for reform of the police and the
security forces.

Without such reforms violent street protests are likely to
erupt on every occasion that offers itself such as happened during recent
protests in front of the US embassy in Cairo against an American-made anti-Muslim
video clip. Those protests led in the Libyan city of Benghazi to the death of
the US ambassador and three other US officials. Reform of the police and
security forces would open the path to Egypt’s return to post-revolt normalcy.
It would also allow for a lifting of the ban on professional soccer, a signal of
the return of the calm needed for Egypt’s embarking on a road of economic
recovery.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Egyptian
soccer appears posed for renewed conflict with the Egyptian Football
Association (EFA) and the government floating a proposal to split the premier
league into two groups in a bid to reduce fan attendance and weaken militant,
highly politicized, street battle-hardened support groups.

The
EFA said the proposal was part of discussions with the ministers of sports and
interior El-Amry Farouk and Ahmed Gamaleddin aimed at agreeing on a resumption
next month of professional soccer that has been suspended since 74 fans were
killed in February in a politically loaded brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port
Said.

The
EFA said in a statement published on its website that it would meet with the
ministers again in the next ten days to set a date for the resumption. Militant
supporters of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC have vowed to prevent the return of
domestic matches as long as justice has not been served for the 74 dead.

The
dead were Al Ahly fans who died in the brawl that erupted at the end of a match
against Port Said’s Al Masry SC. The brawl that got out of hand is widely
believed to have been instigated in a bid to teach a lesson to the militants
who played a key role in last year’s mass protests that toppled Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak as well as in subsequent protests against the military
and the security forces.

More
than seventy people, including nine mid-level security officials, are on trial for
their role in the brawl in a slow-moving legal process that has left fans and
the victims’ families frustrated. Militant soccer fans constitute one of Egypt’s
largest civic groups after the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

Mr. Farouk said the league could be split into a group led
by Al Ahly and one led by its Cairo arch rival Al Zamalek SC."We are discussing
how to reduce the number of teams in the 2012-2013 season to minimize fan
attendance," Mr. Farouk told reporters.

Zamalek’s
administrative manager Hamada Anwar warned that the suspension of soccer was “a
disaster” that had hit the clubs financially. He said a resumption of the
league was needed to avert a financial crisis. “Besides the clubs, the national
team will be badly affected by the championship stoppage. It’s important for
all parties and we must work hand in hand to reschedule the league during the short
time remaining,” Mr. Anwar was quoted as saying on Zamalek’s website.

Players
have organized in recent weeks to demand a resumption of soccer because it
threatened their pay and performance. The move has exasperated relations
between fans and players that were already strained because a majority of
players remained on the side lines of the uprising against Mr. Mubarak or in
some cases went as far as supporting the former autocratic leader.

The
effort to get the league restarted despite supporter objections comes as
militant soccer fans have booked a number of successes in achieving their
demands, which include reform of the police and security forces, depriving the
police of responsibility for stadium security, a clean-up of corruption in
Egyptian soccer and the removal of EFA and club officials associated with the
former Mubarak regime. The militants have in recent weeks repeatedly attacked
theoffices of the EFA,
Al Ahly’s training ground and the premises of media organizations.

Besides thwarting
efforts this fall to lift the ban on domestic soccer, the fans have also forced
a string of Mubarak era officials to resign or withdraw their candidacies for
office. The Illegal Gains Authority moreover has banned the chairman of Al
Ahly, Hassan Hamdi, from travel and frozen his assets on suspicion of
corruption.

Al Ahly fans are likely to further take some satisfaction from a decision
this week by the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to put
on hold an earlier ruling that overturned an EFA banning of Al Masri for two
seasons and its demotion to the second league because of the February brawl,
the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history. The court’s freezing was in
response to an EFA appeal against its earlier decision.

The EFA appeal followed severe criticism by fans who charged that CAS had
overturned the sanctions because the EFA had failed to attend a key hearing in
the case. Al Ahly fans will monitor the EFA’s next steps closely, which could
influence their attitude toward the resumption of the soccer league.

Sporticos

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile